The next release of Omeka will include internationalization, which gives our loyal Omekans one more way to contribute to the project: by helping us translate Omeka into your favorite non-English language!

We are using the Transifex.net site to manage our translations, which will then be shipped with the next version of Omeka. To work on a translation, just register for a free account there, and go to the Omeka project page. Translation work is organized into teams for each language, so click the teams tab to see what languages have already been started. If someone has already started working on your language, follow that link, and ask to join that team. If not, request to create a new team for your language. Additional information is in the Translate Omeka page in our documentation.

Have some spare time over the holidays? Want to contribute to Omeka while you exercise your language skills? Then sign up for a Transifex.net account and help us bring Omeka to an even wider audience!

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media is looking for a new contract developer to join our innovative, energetic, and hilarious team of developers. With guidance from our Lead Developer and Omeka Dev Team Manager, and in collaboration with other developers and members of CHNM, the new team member will work primarily on various aspects of our Omeka content management system. Duties may include helping to resolve issues, building new sites with Omeka, developing plugins and themes, and helping to design and implement future versions of the core Omeka codebase, as well as contributing to other ad-hoc projects within the CHNM ecosystem.

You can see the code at https://github.com/omeka/Omeka. Some other CHNM projects are at https://github.com/chnm.

Required

• Proficiency in PHP and Javascript
• Strong Object-Oriented programming skills
• Familiarity with the MVC design pattern
• Familiarity with Zend Framework
• Excellent communication skills with others at all levels of programming skill, from “Hello World!” novice to seasoned guru
• Ability to balance competing needs and priorities in designing code
• Creativity in problem-solving, and openness to experimenting with unfamiliar approaches

Preferred

• Experience working on open source software projects
• Familiarity with HTML5, CSS3, and graphic design principles
• Experience with Amazon Web Services and other cloud services
• Experience with PHPUnit testing framework
• Background or experience in the Humanities

CHNM is the leading producer of open source tools for humanists and of award-winning history content on the Web (for example: Zotero, Omeka, teachinghistory.org and the Bracero History Archive). Each year CHNM’s many project Web sites receive over 16 million visitors, and over a million people rely on its digital tools to teach, learn and conduct research.

Our preference is for a freelance developer who can join us onsite at George Mason University, which is located 15 miles from Washington DC, and is accessible by public transportation.

Please send a resume and cover letter to jobs@chnm.gmu.edu. We will begin reviewing materials immediately and will close the position on November 15.

Occasionally, interested individuals ask the Omeka team about the future and outlook of the project. Without quoting Timbuk3, I say that we are pleased with what lies ahead.

The Omeka project completed its three-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant in December 2010 (read the final report)and continues to move forward and grow. Since its public launch in 2008, Omeka exceeded all of our expectations in its growth and adoption by institutions of all sizes, individual scholars, educators, and enthusiasts. We have fostered a strong open source community that continues to thrive. CHNM is committed to supporting this community and its software, which we ourselves use for many of our in-house digital cultural heritage projects. Development of Omeka proceeds towards a version 2.0., and work continues with Omeka.net as well, as the development team makes additional plugins available for the hosted service.

As you may have read last week, we are especially pleased to be working with the University of Virginia’s Scholars’ Lab with funding from the Library of Congress over two years to fund a collaborative “Omeka + Neatline” initiative. The project’s goal is to enable scholars, students, and library and museum professionals to create geospatial and temporal visualizations of archival collections using a Neatline toolset within Omeka. Results from this project feed directly into Omeka to include regular point releases, improved documentation, development community support, user studies, key enhancements to the plugin API, and a set of geo-temporal visualization tools.

Omeka will also continue to grow with our newly-awarded IMLS National Leadership Grant to fund a pilot of an Omeka Commons. The Commons will offer a select group of Omeka institutional users an easy, one-click option for adding their collections to a central preservation grade repository to provide institutions with both a low-overhead preservation pathway for their materials, and greater community exposure and engagement. Second, Omeka Commons will provide researchers with immeasurably greater and centralized discovery and open access to the small collections contained in Omeka sites across the web. Meeting these aims will require significant work that will include enhancements to the core Omeka software, a new Omeka Commons server, and design and production of the Omeka Commons discovery portal. We look forward to getting the pilot launched within two years, so that we can offer the Commons option to all Omeka users.

We published a short roadmap that outlines forthcoming releases and milestones for 2011-2012.

We appreciate the support, feedback, and contributions we receive from the Omeka community each day, and we hope you will continue to follow our progress in our next two endeavors.

Six more weeks of winter lie ahead, making the forthcoming frigid days perfect for starting or tweaking an Omeka project. The Omeka team will be working hard as well in February during the newly-designated “Omeka Outreach Month.”

We plan to write a few blog posts, seek assistance with plugin and theme development, and drop a new version at the end of the month featuring new themes and updated plugins. We also want to tweet new Omeka projects, so please share URLs:

• in an email: outreach at omeka dot org;
• on Twitter: @omeka;
• or by posting to the Showcase wiki.

To kick off the month, we set up a Designer-Developer Marketplace forum to serve as a virtual meeting space where anyone looking to showcase her/his Omeka design and development skills can connect with others in need of an experienced designer-developer.

If you want to help with Omeka outreach this month, contact us and we will send you some bookmarks to pass out at conferences or to impress your friends and co-workers.

Open-source projects need strong communities, and we want to extend our thanks to everyone for working together and sharing knowledge (and code) to build one around Omeka.

Omeka is now supported by JumpBox, a service that simplifies the process of installing open source software. JumpBox gives you the option to run a virtual machine locally on your Windows/Mac/Linux personal computer, or to purchase website hosting that includes Omeka already installed.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Omeka with Jumpbox, check out this informative screencast created by Sean Tierney of Jumpbox, or go ahead and download the Omeka 1.1 Jumpbox.

We’re excited to be working with Jumpbox, which is part of our larger effort to provide one-click installs of Omeka. We encourage you to contact your web host and ask for Omeka support.